Reversing Waterloo
by Cearta Day
Summary: "A bucket list of things I will accomplish before leaving high school by Taichi Kamiya." 72 hours until graduation and Tai has to pull off the biggest prank Odaiba High has ever seen


A/N: The Nicolas Cage thing actually happens at my school on a regular basis and it's wonderful.

* * *

**Chapter One**

Let me start by saying traumatizing the school goat was never my intention. It was an entertaining bonus but nowhere near the point. The point was that time was fleeting and friends were drifting and that goat had it out for me since day one.

Let's back track, shall we? This story starts very early on a Monday morning—universally decided to be the worst day of the entire week by everyone sans me who took a weird sort of pleasure in beginnings. There I am: Wide awake, a soggy bowl of Froot Loops, sifting through the paper clogging my desk when I see it trapped beneath a stack of unopened college pamphlets and a pair of my old soccer cleats.

The List. _The_ List that I hadn't spent more than ten minutes creating but had allowed to control my life for the past ten years which was sort of silly because when you got down to it, this was just a bucket list I wrote when I was about eight scribbled in crayon on a piece of crumpled printer paper. The List wasn't the most official looking document but it was still the most important thing I had the misfortune to sign.

This was _The_ List and with the discovery of said list it hit me that graduation truly would be the death of me.

Not because of the usual reasons. Not because I'd peaked in high school, and I had no idea what to do with my life, and my friends were drifting away in a million different directions. But because I had always been a man of my word—even when my word was scribbled in crayon on crumpled printer paper—and in three days I could kiss that title goodbye all because I was physically incapable of finishing my pre-graduation bucket list.

I had exactly three days to get my life together, and it was this alone that justified sneaking into the bedroom of one Matt Ishida at 4:07 in the morning. I hopped in my car, a beat-up Chrysler I bought off my friend Joe when he went off to college last year. It had about 180,000 miles and an irremovable brown dirt coating. To be honest I'm not exactly sure what the real color of the car was, but as long as it could get me from point A to B it'd have to do. I hopped into my car, drove (very steadily as not to upset the fragile beast that was the engine) across the city, entered Matt's apartment building, took the elevator exactly seven floors up and a few moments later I finally arrived in the bedroom of one Matt Ishida.

"We graduate in three days," I said. Matt was a light sleeper, so I didn't even bother checking if he was up. I knew just opening his door was enough to wake him.

I heard a grunt in response from beneath the mass of blankets.

"And The List isn't complete," I continued.

Another grunt.

"Are you listening?"

No grunt this time, so I leaped on top of the mass of blankets and shook them as I punctuated each syllable.

"THE. LIST. IS. NOT. COM. PLETE."

Matt begrudgingly removed the blankets from the top half of his face revealing bed head and a glare. "What list?"

"_The_ list, Matt. My bucket list."

Even without seeing his mouth I knew he was scowling. "We're graduating, not dying."

"Like there's a difference nowadays." I ungracefully shuffled off of Matt and took a cross-legged seat at the end of his bed. From my soccer jacket I dumped out a cell phone, some crumpled note cards, and a few torn receipts before producing The List.

"The List," I explained as if Matt had asked when in all actuality he had placed a pillow over his head and was waiting patiently for me to kindly leave. Then again, best friends were notorious for being unkind to each other.

I cleared my throat and tugged twice on the sides of the paper before reading. "A bucket list of things I will accomplish before leaving high school by Taichi Kamiya. Number one: Start a food fight."

"You did that," Matt said, his words were muffled by the pillow his face was currently stuffed in.

I nodded. "And it was magnificent. Number two: Visit a foreign country."

"You went to France."

"I didn't _really_ go to France," I lamented. "I was there for like three hours to fight some digimon and save a cute girl."

Matt sighed finally coming to terms with the fact that I was not getting off his bed anytime soon. He scooted into a sitting position and rubbed sleep from his eyes. "You've been to a foreign _world_. I really think you've got that one covered."

"Point taken." I pulled a dull pencil out of my blue headband and scribbled a check mark onto The List. "Number three: Be captain of the high school soccer team. Check. Finally, number four: Top the Waterloo Prank."

Matt was silent for an uncomfortably long time then twisted his blanket around his hands and attempted to escape under it. I snatched the blanket from him revealing him in all his pajama pants glory.

"Matt, we have to," I said. "It's on The List."

"_You_ have to," he said.

I gave him a pointed look because Matt knew very well that he was a part of this even without his crayon signature on the bottom of The List.

He sighed and squinted at the door a bit. He was either trying to change the subject or had just now realized that I was in his apartment. "How'd you get in here?"

"You hide the spare key in the letter box," I said. To me at least, this seemed like common knowledge. I knew at least three semi-safe and questionably legal ways to break into all of the Chosen Children's' homes in case of emergency.

Here's the thing: I knew there was nothing Matt wanted to do less than agree to help with what would inevitably turn into another zany scheme, but I also knew that, unlike everybody else in the world, he had no choice. Matt was my best friend, and a best friend was a much more important, less detachable person than a friend. It's like this: last summer Matt's dad told him he had to spend more time visiting his mom since he was graduating this year and all and as much as he would enjoy seeing his little brother, Matt could not stand more than a couple days at his mom's so he spent a whole week hiding out at my apartment while assuring his dad he was lapping it up at her place. And just last week I called Matt at nine at night when it was pouring rain and begged him to come outside and kick a soccer ball with me because "no one's home, no one cares, and all I want to do is kick my soccer ball."

Best friends got to be horrible and put each other out and were honestly the worst friends. Best friends don't even have to have much in common—Matt and I sure don't. You don't keep a best friend around because they entertain you or there's some mutual shallow liking but because best friendship is a two-way street and just as I am stuck with Matt he is equally or more so stuck with me. While marriage had divorce, there was no abandoning a best friend.

That is why at 4:46 on a Monday morning Matt had no choice but to agree to my plan then shove me out of his room so he could get ready for school.

* * *

71 hours, 28 minutes and counting.

Yesterday, graduation could not have been coming any slower but now each tick forward brought me closer to the end and I wanted nothing more than to pause each moment and give myself time to think.

I stood in the lunch line between Sora and Izzy and was attempting to explain to them the importance of The List. Matt was at least aware of its existence previous to this morning, but they were convinced I had just made it up in an attempt to have one last hoorah. And so what if I had? Sora, for one, wasn't one to turn down an adventure. Izzy on the other hand…

"All I'm saying," he said while unflinchingly allowing the lunch lady to slab a vaguely greenish goop on his tray, "is that unlike the rest of you who are graduating within the next few days, I would have to deal with the consequences of my involvement over the next school year."

"What consequences?" I asked. "That you'll be the coolest guy in school, that the ladies will swoon, that your mad skills will be acknowledged by more than just your AP Computer Science class?"

Izzy handed his student ID to the lunch lady at the cash register. He stuck a finger in the air and said, "Consequences include but are not limited to after-school detention, Saturday-school detention, community service hours, suspension, and _expulsion_."

"Izzy, Izzy, Izzy," I said while following Sora away from the lunch line to the usual table. "What you need is to live a little."

"I've lived plenty, thank you," and he probably would've gone on if it weren't for the roar of the lunch room reaching its loudest as we made our way passed the 3-tables-pushed-together-long football player table. I never understood the glory associated with football players. If you're over two hundred pounds, you're in; if you look like a body builder, you're in. A majority of them never even played. Soccer was the fall sport that took actual skill.

We found our usual table on the edge of the cafeteria where Matt was already seated. I asked Sora her opinion on the prank.

Sora, who up to this point had stayed quite through all my ranting, said, "I'm not sure it's worth it. We could get caught and not graduate."

I dramatically slammed my tray onto the rickety cafeteria table. A bit of goop went flying but the, uh, substance was mainly intact. "Graduation isn't worth it if The List isn't complete!"

"Oh god, I was hoping you forgot," Matt said. His tray was pushed to the side, and he'd instead opted to spend the lunch period reading from his AP Chemistry textbook, the only AP class where the unquestionably demon-possessed Ms. Sato forced students to take a final even after taking the AP exam.

"It's just a bit late in the game to do something stupid," she explained in her I'm-staying-calm-but-you're-a-doofus voice.

I took a piece of paper and a pen out of Izzy's backpack (knowing full well I was out. I'd been stealing school supplies from other students who were unfortunate enough to sit next to me in class for the past four years now). "Let's just jot down some ideas and see if any of you change your tune."

"You can't top Waterloo," Matt said matter-of-factly.

"At least not without ruining more careers," Izzy added.

The Waterloo prank was infamous. There was not a soul who had entered these halls without having it told to them in a whispered hush so as not to be overheard by the eagle ears of Principal Takada. You see, Mr. Nagasaki, the old principal, was nicknamed Napoleon because he was short and provided the math teachers with more funding than the English teachers and some sophomore twenty years ago in European history must've thought they were hilarious when they came up with that nickname. Napoleon Bonaparte was defeated in the Battle of Waterloo and the Waterloo Prank is the prank that caused the downfall of Mr. Nagasaki from all-powerful school principal to distant, laughable enigma. It was a series of minor pranks (Filling select class rooms with toast, sticking Nicolas Cage's face over every poster, etc.) surrounded by a rumor that it was all leading up to a finale at the school assembly. At said assembly, Nagasaki was so concerned that some big prank was about to happen that he flipped out, screamed at the student body about how they were all a terrible disgrace then chucked dodge balls into the crowd. No prank finale ever came; Nagasaki took a vacation the rest of the year and didn't return in the fall.

"Okay, alright, here's a thought," I said and scratched my words out on the notebook paper as I wrote. "Why not help instead of hurt? The prank could get Napoleon reinstated… somehow."

Izzy pondered my idea while stirring the goop with a plastic spork. He'd yet to take a bite. "Reverse Waterloo… That would indeed be topping it."

"The only way to do that would be to get Principal Tanaka fired or—Do not even think about it! Taichi, don't terrorize the man," Sora warned.

"Oh, come on!" I half-whined/half-begged. "We don't need to get him fired, just demoted or something. The way I see it, Napoleon deserves to be Principal again."

I slid the notebook paper across the table to Matt for him to check over. He promptly snatched it up taking any excuse he could not to be studying for finals.

Sora frowned but in a way that I knew she was trying to force it. She was coming around. "He was principal a decade ago. Do you really think he wants to come back?"

"I bet he wants to regain his honor, right, Iz?" I asked. Said redhead had taken out his laptop, and over his shoulder I could see he was searching for Napoleon in the yellow pages.

Izzy shrugged and in a very casual tone that in no way matched the epic prank that he was agreeing to Izzy said, "Yeah, if you say so, I'm in."

"Sora?" I asked knowing full well if the rest of us were in she had no choice but to go along. I also knew that as much as she pretended to be the responsible one of the group, she loved a good adventure just as much as the next person.

Sora folded her arms. "I'm only part of this so none of you do anything stupid."

"Matt?"

He raised an eyebrow. "Do I have a choice?"

I grinned. "No, but I thought I should include you in the roll call."

He slipped the paper over to me. "You have a few good ideas but not Waterloo good."

"We'll work it out after school," I said.

After that we suffered through ingesting the goop then the bell rang and we all went our separate ways. I had my team together and an actual plan in place. I glanced up at the clock while slipping out of the cafeteria.

70 hours, 58 minutes, and counting.

I might just survive Graduation.


End file.
